Birthdays, depression, and my little brother

I had a younger brother and he was my treasure. From the day he was brought home from the hospital, I felt responsible for his well-being. And if my parents had died and he had lived, I would have bent my life around to make things good for him. But that isn't the way it went.

My birthday falls in January, which is usually a dreadful month The month encircles the post-holiday letdown and gray, cold weather. In the places I've lived most, add "wet or damp" to that description. But the thought of my birthday generally cheers me up: it is the one day of the year that is about Me. It is the one day of the year when I feel I have the right to demand things go my way.

Unfortunately, while I look forward to my birthday, I always get depressed somewhere in the days preceding or following. And every year, after driving myself batty as I struggle with an unexplained blue mood, I remember again why. It's because my little brother killed himself four days before my twenty-second birthday. And while it has now been 27 years since this happened, I still experience this forgetting, then remembering.

That Damned Novel: Why does it hurt to write and how vulnerable do I want to be?

I'm writing on my novel again. That Damned Novel. TDN, for short. I haven't touched it for a couple of weeks. It haunts me. I feel I have to start over from scratch, but I don't want to trash 36,000 + words. I've totally rewritten the ex-boyfriend from stalker to clueless. The novel still a bit too like conventional romances. I'd rather it be more like Crusie's and Rich's novels: unconventional romance. More complex. More real. Not to imitate, but because those are the types of book I like best.

I am so confused and conflicted.

It's so damned painful, too. I love to write. If there is any way in which the Universe has some sort of structure to how we are made, much like how our individual cells have specific structure and purpose, then I was made to write. I so loved writing short stories, when I wrote before. Some of them came so easily. The one I published, all those years ago, was such a one.

Ch-ch-changes! continued

Part Two

So here I am: in Houston, still essentially unemployed (thank the gods for extended unemployment benefits) and going through my savings faster than I like, and still feeling at sea and not feeling very different from when I lived in Oregon. And there is still the question of "What do I want to do?"

The answer to that is both simple and complicated: I want to write. Sure, I want to keep doing the technical/scientific thing. But I want to write fiction. Stories. Novels. That's what I've wanted all my life. And I've never had the guts, beyond some short stories. I haven't finished anything since I was thirty.

I still need self-confidence. I need to give myself credit for my accomplishments, rather than brushing them off. I need to stop grieving over my interminable solitary state and just "get over it." (Many people live alone, with few connections. They survive, dammit!) I want to be peaceful and happy, strong and confident. I want to do what I want to do and make a living at it, even if "it" is several things. I want to have fun, be myself, have courage, and stop comparing myself to everyone around me.

Ch-ch-changes!

Part One

I am a forty-eight- ... on the verge of forty-nine- ... year-old woman. I am a professional technical writer and editor (that includes science, too) with a gajillion years of experience, but I am unemployed. And looking. (I use the term "between jobs" to remind myself that another one is right around the corner. So far the corner has been a very long way away.) I am endeavoring to change my self and my life; there is a lot of stuff that I am wayyyy too old to still be struggling with, in my opinion, and I have been suffering from a multitude of symptoms that are life's little way of saying "time to change." But a lot more forcefully and profanely.

After a few years of increasing dissatisfaction with my life, I finally began to make major changes to myself and my life in 2007. I began setting boundaries, particularly with my family. I began to think of living somewhere other than in the small town on the Oregon Coast where I had lived for several years. And I ... or rather, life ... broke down walls that I had spent two or three decades building. I could no longer refuse to look at my life, and I could no longer be the person I had been, no matter that I still try from time to time.

Your ideas please

I'm having difficulties finding work, as everyone around me knows. There are a few positions opening up in technical writing and editing. One position in particular keeps popping up: Technical Writer in Saudi. It doesn't specify the contract length or the rate of pay, but I imagine the length is at least a year and the pay is astronomical. And there would be no place to spend it because I am a single woman and wouldn't be allowed to wander around alone, I'm sure.

Would you do this? Would you take a year or two away from your friends and family and live in a country like Saudi in order to have a job? Especially a high-paying job?

The New 'Do

Notice my new blog-do? The old one didn't constrain the area for the title graphic, causing the graphic to look short and the text to run past the edge of the graphic. I didn't like it. So I decided to try out another of the blogspot templates.

And the old one kind of hid the link to where you can leave a comment; I hope the comment link in this template is noticeable enough. I haven't figured out how to do a couple of things I'd like to do, but doing them is for the future and maybe I cannot do them here at blogspot. I'll figure it out, now that I am paying more attention to this blogging whim of mine.

The Sincerest Form of Flattery

Today I am following the lead of ... copying, perhaps ... an author named Lani Diane Rich. She began a blog series under her Lucy March name to document her life and personal changes over the next 516 days, which is when she hits her 40th birthday.

In 1 year and 2 weeks, I will be 50. That is 54 weeks. Three hundred seventy-eight days. Wow. There is a lot I want to do with myself and my life by then. Some very real changes I want to make. And I want to blog about what I do and the changes I make, to share with my friends and family, most of whom are far away, to give myself regular writing practice that stretches both my skills and my creativity, and to give myself a record of all these things. These are the goals I originally set for this blog.

Goals, not resolutions

New Year's resolutions are easily broken. They are what you will do that year, and if you don't achieve them that year, you have failed. (Studies show that people become quite depressed when they break their resolutions.)

Goals, on the other hand, are targets, and need not be finished within the year for success. As I am a perfectionist and I have always considered life to be something you either get an A in or an F, setting myself up for something that I can fail at isn't such a good idea. I know — having an "A or F" perception of life isn't a good idea either, but I can't fix that problem quickly and working around it at least allows me to accomplish some things.

I haven't accomplished much, in my eyes, this past year. I am still mostly unemployed and I have made few friends (and some of those simply disappeared). I haven't finished a novel or a piece of art, and I don't know Houston like the back of my hand. Nor have I ventured into the unknown again, haven't checked out Austin or Dallas.

As I mentioned earlier, I am a perfectionist.